Master Pedro

Master Pedro is a traveling puppet-showman whose act combines a puppet play with an ape presented as an extraordinary source of answers. At an inn, he draws Don Quixote and Sancho Panza into both attractions: first through claims about the ape’s knowledge, then by inviting them to watch a production about Don Gaiferos and Melisendra. His importance lies in the way his performances make stories seem present and knowledge seem accessible, even as the means of producing those effects remain theatrical.

Identity and Arrival

Master Pedro enters the inn dressed entirely in chamois leather, from his hose and breeches to his doublet. A patch of green taffeta covers his left eye and nearly half his cheek, a detail the narrative reports without explaining its cause. He announces that the divining ape and the show of Melisendra’s release are arriving, but comes ahead of them to find out whether the inn has room. The landlord greets him as a welcome and familiar entertainer, and assures him that there is space even if someone as important as the Duke of Alva had to be displaced.

The landlord describes Master Pedro as a famous puppeteer who has been traveling around Mancha de Aragon. His production tells how Don Gaiferos releases his wife, Melisendra, from captivity among the Moors. The landlord also explains the appeal of the ape: it listens to questions, climbs onto its master’s shoulder, and appears to whisper an answer. Master Pedro then supplies the response. According to the landlord, the ape is more reliable about past events than future ones, and its answers are not always true, although they often seem close enough to persuade an audience that it possesses uncanny knowledge. The act is lucrative: a question costs two reals when the ape answers through its master, and the landlord believes Master Pedro has grown rich from the performances.

The Ape and the Appearance of Knowledge

When Master Pedro returns with the cart, the ape is described as large, tailless, and not vicious-looking. Don Quixote immediately tests its supposed powers by asking what the future holds and offering two reals. Master Pedro clarifies that the ape cannot report future events; it knows something of the past and present. The exchange sets a limit on the act even as it preserves its mystery: the performer does not claim unlimited foresight, but presents a narrower power that can still attract customers.

Sancho Panza asks what his wife, Teresa Panza, is doing at that moment. Master Pedro refuses to take Sancho’s money before providing the service. He slaps his left shoulder twice, and the ape jumps onto it and chatters close to his ear. After the animal jumps down, Master Pedro hurries to Don Quixote, kneels, embraces his legs, and praises him as a restorer of knight-errantry. The scene shows how the ape’s gesture and Master Pedro’s response form a coordinated performance: the apparent consultation is followed by a dramatic address to Don Quixote. The account does not give the answer about Teresa, so the outcome of Sancho’s question remains unstated.

Sancho later asks Master Pedro to consult the ape about Don Quixote’s experiences in the Cave of Montesinos, which Sancho suspects may have been a dream or falsehood. Master Pedro repeats the question, lets the ape whisper, and reports a deliberately divided answer: some of what Don Quixote saw or experienced was false and some true. He adds that the ape’s power is exhausted until the following Friday. The response offers no decisive way to distinguish truth from invention. Don Quixote accepts that events and time will eventually disclose what happened, then turns his attention to the show.

The Puppet Play

Master Pedro announces that the production is ready and boasts of its many novelties. The show is arranged in the inn under the light of wax tapers, which make it appear bright and splendid. Master Pedro takes his place inside the puppet apparatus, where he operates the figures; his servant stands outside with a wand and acts as interpreter, explaining the action to the assembled spectators. Don Quixote, Sancho Panza, a page, and a cousin receive the best places, while the other people at the inn gather before the stage.

The servant introduces the performance as a true story derived word for word from French chronicles and Spanish ballads. Its subject is the release of Melisendra, held captive in Sansuena, the name the story gives to what is now Saragossa, by her husband Don Gaiferos. The interpreter also identifies Charlemagne as Melisendra’s supposed father and explains his anger at Don Gaiferos’s apparent inaction. Drums, trumpets, and cannon sound within the show before the explanation begins, giving the puppet spectacle the formal markers of a public romance. The production thus combines Master Pedro’s hidden work with the servant’s spoken account: the figures supply visible action, while the interpreter guides how the audience understands it.

Performance and Narrative Significance

Master Pedro is presented through the acts he organizes rather than through a supplied account of his background. The inn’s audience encounters him as both a commercial entertainer and the operator behind apparently extraordinary performances. His ape act depends on a repeated sequence of question, whisper, and answer; his puppet play divides the work between the showman inside the apparatus and the interpreter outside it. In both cases, spectators see a performance whose apparent authority is mediated by Master Pedro and his helpers.

The two attractions offer different kinds of access to stories. The ape is said to reveal something about past and present, but its answers remain qualified and uncertain. The puppets, by contrast, enact a familiar tale while the servant names its characters and supplies its history. Together, the acts place the boundary between knowledge and entertainment under scrutiny: an audience may be absorbed by what it sees and hears without being able to verify the claims that make the spectacle persuasive. Don Quixote’s questions about the future and the Cave of Montesinos make that uncertainty part of the encounter, while his eagerness to see the play carries him from the ape’s equivocal answer back into the world of narrated chivalric adventure.